Mississauga Steelheads Go Leafs with New Jerseys

The Ontario Hockey League’s newest team, the Mississauga Steelheads, unveiled their new team jerseys Friday via their official Twitter feed.

The uniforms are a direct usage of the Toronto Maple Leafs jersey template, same colours and striping, but with the logos of the Steelheads in place of the Maple Leafs, and the team does not try to hide this fact.

New Mississauga Steelheads white jersey for 2012-13

In the official press release the team acknowledged approval was required from the NHL before using the design on their new uniforms:

Following an approval process with the National Hockey League (NHL), the team is proud to wear the iconic Blue and White Leafs jerseys for the upcoming season. Staying true to the Toronto Maple Leafs Blue and White, the Steelheads will be wearing the traditional “Leafs look” from head to toe for the 2012-2013 season.

From that last sentence we know the team helmets, pants, and socks will also be a direct copy of the Leafs. We’ll assume the numbers on the back of the player jerseys will also be in Maple Leafs style.

For those unfamiliar with the location of Mississauga, it’s right next door to Toronto; a very large city in it’s own right (with a population over 700,000 it’s Canada’s 6th largest) but lacking it’s own identity due to it’s proximity with it’s much larger neighbour to the east in Toronto.

New Steelheads shoulder logo, featuring the Port Credit lighthouse

What we hadn’t seen before was the new shoulder logos on the Steelheads jerseys.

A combination of the letter “M” for Mississauga and a lighthouse, the lighthouse is based off of the one located in Port Credit – a smaller lakeside community within the City of Mississauga.

The Port Credit Lighthouse, inspiration for the new shoulder logo

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A Brief History of the Steelheads

The Steelheads were originally known as the Toronto St. Michael’s Majors, established for the 1998 OHL season. Unrelated to the Majors, one season later Mississauga got a separate franchise known as the Mississauga IceDogs.

In 2007, a franchise swap occurred seeing the Toronto St. Mike’s Majors re-locate to Mississauga while the Mississauga IceDogs headed south to St. Catharines to become the Niagara IceDogs.

Following the 2012 season the Mississauga St. Michael’s Majors were sold to new owners on the condition that the Majors name no longer be used by the team. A name-the-team contest was held and Steelheads was selected in honour of the fish that frequents the local Port Credit River.

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Details on how to order one of these new Steelheads jerseys is listed below, from the official team press release:

For those looking to secure their piece of Steelhead history, the team will be offering a pre-order for fans looking to order their official Mississauga Steelheads jersey. As a bonus, the first 100 fans to place their order will have the chance to get their jersey signed by a current Steelhead player of their choice! For more details on the pre-order, visit the Steelheads office at the Hershey Centre or emailinfo@mississaugasteelheads.com .

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Chris Creamer is the founder of SportsLogos.Net and has been maintaining it since June 1997. You can follow him on Twitter at @sportslogosnet or contact him via email at ccreamer@sportslogos.net

Aaron

The uniforms look fine, except they didn’t necessarily have to copy the Leafs’ style to a T. I can understand if they were run by MLSE.

Aaron S.

I think the use of the Leafs exact uniforms was an easy decision because Reebok already has the template done up and it’s simpler to go with that than a total revamp. However, the original St. Michael’s Majors were the farm club for the Leafs until 1962, so if you like connections to history, the use of these uniforms is actually an accurate and meaningful fit.

Aaron

Good point!

Chris Creamer

Yes but there are over 70 teams in the Canadian Hockey League; and while most of them use design templates employed by other NHL or AHL teams they at least either change the colour scheme or do something to differentiate.

I think we’re just not so used to a team flat-out saying “yes, we are using their uniform”.

Aaron

Hey, just a thought, if the Markham Waxers ever enter the OHL, I wonder if they’d use the Leafs template or use a completely different team template altogether?

Chris Creamer

I’d think that they’d have to if the Steelheads are still using this design

ingmar66

I see it as a tribute to the Leafs. The uni’s are even nicer, as the Steelheads logo’s are much more exciting than the leaf of the Leafs.